in what manner, they make advantage of their money; what are their
principles, and what their practice, in their sales, in their borrowing,
and in all their business. You shall find usury reigning throughout their
traffic; and that they who have no stings of conscience, in relation to
unjust dealings, have by indirect ways scraped together the greatest part
of their estates. But in things where money has to do, many are so
hardened, that, being charged with rapine, they have either no scruple
concerning it, or so very light, that it never breaks their sleep.

"Use particularly this method towards the governors, the treasurers, the
receivers, and other officers belonging to the revenue. Whensoever they
present themselves before you in the sacred tribunal, interrogate that
sort of people, by what means they grow so rich? what secret they have to
make their offices and employments bring them in such mighty sums? If
they are shy of telling you, turn and wind them every way, and the most
mildly that you can, make them speak, in spite of themselves. You shall
soon discover their tricks, and secret ways of management, by which an
inconsiderable number of those they call men of business, divert, to
their own private advantages, what was designed for the public profit.
They buy up commodities with the king's money, that, by selling them
again, they may be able to make up their accounts: And by taking up all
the commodities in the port, they put the people upon a necessity of
buying at their price, that is, at most intolerable rates.

"Too often also, they make men languish at the treasury, with long
delays, and cunning shifts, or some other captious trick; men, I say, to
whom the exchequer is owing, that they may be driven to compound with
those sharks of state for half their due, and let them go off with the
other half. This open robbery, this manifest villainy, those gentlemen
call, by a mollified name, 'the fruits of their industry.' When you have
squeezed out of them the confession of these monopolies, and the like, by
wire-drawing them, with apt questions, you will come more easily to the
knowledge of their ungodly gains, and what they ought to make restitution
of to their neighbour, in order to their being reconciled to God, than if
in general you should interrogate them concerning their injustice. For
example, demand of them, what persons they have wronged? they will
immediately answer, that their memory upbraids them not